You may soon need a subscription to view Instant Articles on Facebook

Chances are, you've come across an Instant Article or two while scrolling through your Facebook feed: Essentially, Instant Articles are a mobile publishing format for specific news and media outlets to quickly display content inside the Facebook app without having to load their full website; for the end-user, this can result in 10x faster load times when reading.

While nice for readers, Instant Articles have been somewhat controversial on the publishing side, as businesses have seen little conversion in the growth of their audience. In response, Facebook hopes to entice publishers — especially those from subscription organizations like the Wall Street Journal — to stick around by giving readers the option to subscribe to a publication's content after reading an article.

If people subscribe after seeing news stories on Facebook, the money will go directly publishers who work hard to uncover the truth, and Facebook won't take a cut. We plan to start with a small group of U.S. and European publishers later this year and we'll listen to their feedback. (Mark Zuckerberg)

Facebook has yet to say which publishers will be involved in the new Instant Articles subscription test, but the company did say that it's hoping to include a wide variety of publishers of different sizes with varied business models and geographical locations.

That means both newspapers and magazines, and publications that use paywalls and those that offer "freemium" models. The final group of publishers will be revealed before the test begins, Facebook said. (The Verge)

What do you think?

Would you consider subscribing to a publication after reading one of their articles on Facebook, or not? Let us know in the comments.